Well, then, what about Peter?

[intrepid--fox.livejournal.com]

Oursin's thoughts about Ann's Marlovian qualities made me think about Peter's. I mean, just how Marlovian is he, when you really think about him? He's scared of heights (can't imagine his naval ancestors gibbering in the rigging, somehow) and this fear, coupled with his pointblank refusal to admit to it, gets him into major strife, like freezing on the cliffs, and feeling pressured into breaking back into the Foley house, all just in case people might suspect something most of them already know anyway.

He's got appalling taste in friends, starting with horrid Hugh and kleptomaniac Dickie as described in Traitor, and extending all the way up to Foley. He and Patrick seem to be friends more through force of circumstance than genuine liking. And you can't help suspecting that his mate Selby at Dartmouth is as dull as ditchwater, can you? Of course, you could argue that poor taste in friends is a trait he shares with Ginty, Karen and possibly Lawrie (Ann doesn't have any friends that we ever see).

Possibly because of all the strongminded siblings he's surrounded by, he's underconfident and has a tendency to be dominated by others (Patrick, Rowan, Giles). And in his turn, he tends to bully other people when he feels he can get away with it, shading into the sadistic when he's acting the part of the chief brigand in Peter's Room.

Although he's good at sailing, there's no particular reason to suspect that he's got anything else which will enable him to make a successful career as a naval officer: he's got no head for navigation, panics under pressure and makes seriously stupid decisions about the best way of handling crises (hmm, we have a large gang of drug-dealing thugs. Tell you what, I'll get a bunch of them to chase me round the countryside brandishing bicycle chains and razors, while you break into their house and my (presumably) virginal and inexperienced young sister is left on her own with a horny and experienced gang-member. What's that? Let the police handle it? Naah.)

Thoughts, anyone?

Comments

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

Hmm, interesting.

Although popular opinion states that AF was quite conservative and therefore unlikely to be a feminist, I do wonder whether she was making a subtle feminist statement with Peter and Nicola - Nicola being, to all intents and purposes, far better suited to a career in the Navy than Peter, who is nevertheless shunted that way purely because he's a boy. I don't think Nicola ever expresses any feelings of unfairness about this (though I haven't read all the 'holiday' books, so she might), but then she's quite stoic about the whole 'sorry love, we're yanking you out of school cause your twin's too much of a drama queen to cope with the trauma' unfairness in Cricket Term, so she could be suppressing it all...

Not sure I'd agree with Lawrie and Ginty having bad taste in friends, I must say - Ginty has a definite preference for the redoubtable Monica, and only gravitates towards drips when Monica's not around; and I don't think Lawrie's friendship with Tim is a bad choice. But then I suppose you could argue that neither Ginty nor Lawrie are the driving force behind those particular friendships...Can't remember enough about Karen's friendships to comment.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I don't think she does really think it's unfair - she seems to accept that boys are better (isn't there something about her imagining a family of all boys?). I don't remember anything in the holiday books. Although she's not really tested - she is fairly resourceful, but then no-one expects her to be, Her and Rowan do so off their own bats, while Peter's pressured into being a Navy type.

Karen is friends with Margaret Jessop, who Lawrie has a crush on. Lawrie also makes rather dubious friends left to her own devices - I suspect that prior to Tim, she hid behind Nick's friend-making abilities and tastes. At the Merricks' 12th Night party she's on the stairs with older and drunker people, and actually in The Thuggery Affair, she's enjoying herself thoroughly until she realises that she's been rather stupid in underestimating Red Ted.

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

Yes, you're right about Lawrie, actually - & I think that if Tim hadn't latched onto her, she could well have ended up being friends with all sorts of undesirables at Kingscote.

Isn't Margaret Jessop supposed to be rather fab, though?

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Lawrie, in Autumn Term, develops a crush on Lois... ?enuff said about her judgement?

[intrepid--fox.livejournal.com]

Both Lawrie and Peter have a tendency to develop crushes on people, which Nicola is far too sensible to do (or at least sensible enough to restrict them to people who are safely dead).

[intrepid--fox.livejournal.com]

I was really thinking about Edwin rather than Karen's schoolfriends - I think the only one of those we see is Margaret Jessop, who seems nice enough. And although Monica is OK, the rest of her friends are pretty self-important and snooty.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I do wonder whether she was making a subtle feminist statement with Peter and Nicola

Is this - trying to think of textual evidence! - something that shifts over the course of the books? Because massive social changes around possibilities for women over the period: at the beginning just being a Wren ('typing in uniform') would probably have been seen as quite a radical choice of career, but things are definitely shifting in the later episodes - e.g. Jan Scott going into her ?uncle's law firm not as a secretary but to be a proper solicitor in the family firm. But feel that there is a long tradition in Eng lit, esp possibly YA lit, of girls feeling excluded from the career possibilities open to their brothers and brothers feeling ambivalent about the family business, whatever that is - e.g. in Yonge's The Daisy Chain, there's an unspoken assumption that Norman, who turns pale and faint at the sight of blood, is automatically going to be successor in family medical practice (and this causes one of the many crises de conscience among the May siblings). (And one wishes Ethel had gone to London Medical School for Women...)